early sep. 6th
After a sleepless overnight flight from Nova Scotia to Heathrow' terminal three, I find myself standing in a long line at the UK border. an hour goes by, the only visuals in the place are 10 foot letters spelling out 'UK Border'. Taunting me.
My time finally comes and it purposefully walk up to the border official and when asked my purpose in the UK, I proudly say 'I'm here to work!' and present all of the documents I could possibly imagine them needing: the job offer letter from Oxford, the work permit from the dep. of labor; passport, etc. etc. She rifles through them for short while and then asks: "where is your visa?"
"My what?! no, no.. I don't need a visa, see..." and i point to a highlighted sentence in the one of the letters I had from the UK dep. of labor. Pointing to the same sentence the lady said: "you cannot enter the country without a visa. we have to send you back." I suspected she was kidding. I was wrong.
Exhausted, tiered, frustrated and disapointed, I take a seat with what will turn out to be increasingly 'vilinaous' company: at first I'm waiting with low-level customs-infractors: UK citizens who somehow didn't have their passports, people with expired passports, etc.
After a while of conferring with her boss and calling the university, the lady returns, unhappy and in a hurry. She rushes off to collect and inspect my bags before 'processing' me. She is walking really fast, and I'm exhausted and lugging all my earthly possessions with me. She snaps for me to hurry up. We get a trolley ( i call it a 'cart') for my bags.
For here I get to see parts of the Heathrow you never want to see. Starting with the 'interrogation' room. The 'trolley' full of my bags is large enough that it is difficult to fit it all through doorways and after struggleing to get it into the interrogtaion room for a while, the customs lady grow frustrated and I leave my bags, trolley and all, in the hallway. Soon after, a fellow customs employee comes by to tell me i cannot leave my trolley full of bags in the hallway. why not? because it is a fire hazard. Perfect foreshadowing for the rest of my introduction to this country.
Now, it is exactly at this time -- as I, exhausted and panicked, unload and toss my bags into the interrogation room, and then spider-man my way over the pile of my possessions to be interrogated -- that I see the absurdity in the whole situation. Panic and fear turn to amusement and a passive sense of absurdity.
After the interrogation room I got to visit the 'finger print room', which is where i met the next tier of dentainies -- petty drug smugglers and scekty people who didn't want to talk about what they were there for. The room consisted of me, a few other detainees, a huge machine for taking digitized fingerprints and its operator, who i think has the worst job. Every 5 seconds someone else would come into the room and dump more work on him in a none-too-friendly fashion. Naturally, i felt like chatting with this guy. He hated his job and the automatic fingerprinting machine [which, my the way, never worked 'automatically', but couldn't be operated 'manually' until three unsuccessful 'automatic' trials. So my time there, and his whole day, is spent with my finger on a glass plate, waiting for the computer to tell us there are no fingers on the glass plate three times. Brilliant].
From there the original broader lady reappears and takes some pity on me. As I'm waiting to enter the 'detention lounge' [just like jail, except with one big room, couches and a TV], she diverts me [and my trolley] and redirects to what I call the 'sick kid and asylum seeker' waiting area. There I meet people seeking asylum from various African countries and cease feeling bad about my situation: at least if i get sent back i won't die. I feel huge sympathy with my fellow detainees, but only have a stalk of celery and a Luna bar to share with them. They didn't like the celery.
After a total of something like 8-10 hours in Heathrow, being detained, interrogated, fingerprinted, etc. etc. my 'case' is settled: I'm being turned away and sent back on the next flight to where came from -- Halifax, Nova Scotia. Great. what the hell am I gonna do in Nova Scotia?!
But the next flight doesn't leave for 12 hours, so immigration confiscates my passport, and gives this cryptic, official paperwork from the Queen [well, not really] saying that I'm not actually granted 'entrance' to the UK, even though I can leave the airport. So I take a bus to Oxford, shower, sleep for 7 hours [the first in about two days] and get ready to be deported.
The next day I show up to Heathrow and wait in the "Air Canada'' ticketing line. When my time finally comes, I walk up to the agent and immediately apologize for being what will surely be the *worst* customer this guy has all day:
''Do you have your passport?''
''no, immigration confiscated it.''
''Do you have a ticket?''
''no, but I have this piece of paper from the Queen telling me to leave the country.''
"I see....''
After explaining I have no funds available with which to purchase a ticket [and having no intension to do so even if i could] I get a ticket from Air Canada. But with no ID I have to be escorted through security by an airport official. And the British love their lines [or 'queues'].
Between security and passport control, there is about 10 feet or corridor and a phone on the wall. My instructions were to call immigration from the phone and wait for them to return my passport, and escort me to the jetway. I call. Wrong number. I call another number. and another. Finally i get through. "yea yea, just sit tight." An hour goes by and I get my passport back. But now there is a black pirate stamp in it saying 'refused'. cool.
Finally, I'm on track to actually leave. Who knew getting ticked out of a country was such a chore.
